Current implantable medical devices (IMDs) provide countless therapies and monitor a wide variety of physiological events. With the increased uses of IMDs has also come the need for improved methods of communicating with and between IMDs.
Conventionally, communication with IMDs has been with magnetic field communication systems. Such systems, however, are generally only capable of communicating over very short distances, on the order of a few inches. As a result, a magnetic head of a programmer (or other external device) needs to be placed near to the IMD for communication to occur. More recently, radio frequency (RF) based communication systems have been developed for use with IMDs. RF communication provides a number of benefits over magnetic field communication systems, including much greater communication distances. However, conventional RF communication systems also consume more battery power than magnetic field communication systems.